Archive for January, 2014

As I explained in my last post, I’m expecting good things from the upcoming dialogue between Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig. Before discussing the topic, a few comments about debating.

An awful lot of rubbish has been written about counteracting Craig’s diabolical debating; it’s actually pretty simple. When you speak, make a clear argument for a relevant conclusion. After he speaks, target specific premises of his arguments and explain why you think they are unlikely to be true. That’s it. It sounds simple, and it’s been done very effectively, but so many of Craig’s opponents can’t manage it.

Critics have said that Craig unfairly dictates the flow of the debate, keeping a stranglehold on the topic of his choosing. This doesn’t happen when his opponent keeps him busy.Austin Dacey and Keith Parsons are great examples. Craig won’t ignore your case if you make one, and it’s relevant. Give him something to respond to.

If you fail to make a case, Craig will have read your writings and be prepared to both make your own case for you and critique it. He did this to great effect against Rosenberg. If you fail to address his arguments, he will point this out and repeat them. He is justified in doing so because one often hears the refrain that “I’m an atheist because there’s no evidence for God”. To maintain that there is no evidence, one must be able to explain why the supposed evidence isn’t really evidence at all. As an analogy, one cannot reasonably claim that “there is no evidence that human beings walked on the moon” and not attempt to explain the Apollo 11 photographs and videos.

There is no excuse for debating Craig underprepared. You can listen to a debate from the early 1990’s and get most of his arguments. That said, you are better off reading an article rather than responding to a 20 minute summary. It’s best not to raise objections that he has already addressed in print, or even better, raise them in a way that also addresses his response.

Always go for the argument, never the man. If you’ve shown that Craig is mistaken, then it doesn’t much matter how he convinced himself of such falsehoods. Amateur anthropology/psychology/neuroscience – e.g. any sentence beginning with “human beings have a very strong cognitive bias to believe …” – is a waste of time. Just burn down his arguments; don’t toast marshmallows on the embers. Resist Bulverism!

Remember: critiquing is hard. That someone is wrong doesn’t make it easier. Step 1: understand. Step 2: critique. Here are a few resources. Feel free to add more in the comments.

Kalam Cosmological Argument

Craig’s article with James Sinclair in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology is up-to-date and comprehensive. It goes into great detail about the science, in particular, the singularity theorems and their exceptions. A must read for any Kalam critic.

For a response to the kind of objections that the hoi polloi raise but philosophers don’t, watch this youtube video. It’s based on an article in this volume.

Contingency (Leibnizian) Argument

I think the most comprehensive presentation of Craig’s version of the argument is in his book “Reasonable Faith”. A shorter (and free) introduction is here.

Some of the “Questions of the week” shed more light on the philosophical issues that arise: 132, 190, 248, 329.

I recommend Alexander Pruss’ article on the Leibnizian argument in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Craig calls it “a must”, but be aware that it differs from Craig’s version in both content and style. In particular, Pruss defends a more comprehensive version of the principle of sufficient reason.

Fine-Tuning Argument

Questions of the weeks that address the argument: 49, 63, 161, 313. In particular, Craig’s response to the multiverse, include the Boltzmann Brain problem: 14, 285.

For the scientific details of the argument, Craig relies a lot on the work of Robin Collins. Collins’ best presentation of fine-tuning cases is in this book. He presents the argument itself in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. He has an interesting discussion of the implications of the Boltzmann brain problem in this article.

On February 21-22 (2014), Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig will debate at the Greer-Heard Forum, at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The topic is “God and Cosmology: The Existence of God in Light of Contemporary Cosmology”. For a number of reasons, I have high hopes for this one. Here’s why.

I (mostly) like the format

We start with a dialogue between the two parties, for 1.5 hours. As a spectator, I prefer the debate format. While a dialogue sounds like a friendly chat rather than a confrontation, in practice it unfairly unfavors the rude and the loud. We are at the mercy of the disciplinary skill of the moderator. However, this one shouldn’t be too bad. Craig will let his opponent talk, and I get the same impression from Carroll.

Given the list of things I’d like them to discuss, as I’ll discuss in future posts, I’m hoping that each party gets an opening statement of at least 20 minutes. They both have a lot to say about this topic, and need the time to present their case thoroughly.

The next day we’re back with 4 speakers, each with an hour that includes responses from Carroll and Craig. That’s a very interesting arrangement and I’m keen to see how it works in practice. The day rounds out with concluding comments from the two debaters.

Good choice of debaters

I’ve listened to a number of William Lane Craig’s debates and the best ones are usually against other philosophers, for this reason. The topic is God, or at least something closely related to the almighty. In any argument for or against the existence of God, at least one of the premises must be metaphysical. So against, say, a scientist, Craig can absorb a lot of the scientific expertise of his opponent and focus on the (often unstated) philosophical assumptions behind their remarks. The debate moves to matters philosophical, which gives Craig the home advantage. Some of Craig’s opponents know less than nothing about philosophy; what they think they know about philosophy is wrong. On the other hand, Craig knows enough of the science that is relevant to his arguments to be able to defend the scientific premises against a philosopher.

Carroll has an undergraduate philosophy minor and as a grad student in astrophysics at Harvard, sat in on courses with John Rawls and Robert Nozick. His blog posts and articles show a familiarity with and respect for philosophical issues. Carroll is close to the ideal opponent for this debate, as he should be able to hold his own on matters philosophical, whilst holding a substantial advantage on matters cosmological.

Good Choice of Respondents

I’m guessing that Craig will defend three of his usual five arguments – the Kalam cosmological argument from the beginning of the universe, the contingency argument, and the design argument from the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. The contingency argument doesn’t rely on any particular scientific theories, so Craig doesn’t need any particular backup on that front. For the Kalam cosmological argument, his scientific case for the premise “the universe has a beginning” has been provided in recent times by James Sinclair. In particular, Craig’s most sophisticated defence of the argument in recent times is in the The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, which was co-written with Sinclair. Sinclair is a Warfare Analyst with a masters in cosmology, so his credentials are slightly unorthodox.

Also writing in the The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology is Robin Collins, a philosopher with a background in physics. He has specialised in the argument from the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. So that gives Craig his backup for his third argument.

Carroll has two philosophers in tow. Alex Rosenberg is a philosopher at Duke University who Craig has debated before, and whose book “The Atheist’s Guide to Reality” was praised by both sides of the debate as seeing rather clearly the consequences of atheism. Tim Maudlin is a philosopher of science at New York University. His book “Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time” is marvellous. He also seems to have taken an interest in the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. (I have a few reservations about his opinions on that topic.)

That’s an interesting line up. I’d gladly hear any of them speak on the topic at hand; all four of them in a row with responses from Carroll and Craig is very promising.

My advice

I think this debate could be uniquely insightful on this important topic. Craig has said an awful lot about cosmology in recent years, and no one has really pressed him on the details. They’ve mostly (though not unreasonably) appealed to cosmological authorities. (For the love of Pete, nobody read out an email from Alex Vilenkin. More on that soon.) Carroll has said a lot about the implications of cosmology for theism, and there are some philosophical niceties to be examined there as well. Stay tuned for parts two, three, and four.

Following my three critiques (one, two, three) of Richard Carrier’s view on the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life, we had a back-and-forth in the comments section of his blog. Just as things were getting interesting, Carrier took his ball and went home, saying that any further conversation would be “a waste of anyone’s time”. Sorry, anyone.

I still have questions. Before I forget, I’ll post them here. (I posted them as a comment on his blog but they’re still “awaiting moderation”. I guess he’ll delete them.)

The Main Attraction

What is Carrier’s main argument in response to fine-tuning, in his article “Neither Life nor the Universe Appear Intelligently Designed”? He kept accusing me of misrepresenting him, but never clarified his argument. I’ll have another go. Let,

We want to calculate the posterior: the probability of NID given what we know. From Carrier’s footnote 29, introduced as the “probability that NID caused the universe”, we can derive (using the odds form of Bayes’ theorem),

(1)

Carrier argues in footnotes 22 and 23 that,

implies , (2)

because o is part of “established background knowledge” and so part of b. Thus,

(3)

Conclusion: the posterior is be equal to the prior (as seen in footnote 29). Learning f has not changed the probability that NID is true. Fine-tuning is irrelevant to the existence of God.

Question 1: Is the above a correct formalisation of Carrier’s argument? (If anyone has read his essay, comment!) (more…)